Going Postal - Terry Pratchett [116]
Even Miss Extremelia Mume, whose small, multipurpose temple over a bookmakers’ office in Cable Street handled the worldly affairs of several dozen minor gods, was doing good business among those prepared to back an outside chance. She’d hung a banner over the door. It read: IT COULD BE YOU.
It couldn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen. But, you never knew…this time it might.
Moist recognized that hope. It was how he’d made his living. You knew that the man running the Find the Lady game was going to win, you knew that people in distress didn’t sell diamond rings for a fraction of their value, you knew that life generally handed you the sticky end of the stick, and you knew that the gods didn’t pick some everyday undeserving tit out of the population and hand them a fortune.
Except that, this time, you might be wrong, right? It might just happen, yes?
And this was known as that greatest of treasures, which is Hope. It was a good way of getting poorer really very quickly, and staying poor. It could be you. But it wouldn’t be.
Now Moist von Lipwig headed along Attic Bee Street, toward the Lady Sybil Free Hospital. Heads turned as went past. He hadn’t been off the front page for days, after all. He just had to hope that the wingéd hat and golden suit were the ultimate in furniture; people saw the gold, not the face.
The hospital was still being built, as all hospitals are, but it had its own queue at the entrance. Moist dealt with that by ignoring it, and going straight in. There were, in the main hallway, people who looked like the kind of people whose job it is to say “Oi, you!” when other people just wander in, but Moist generated his personal “I’m too important to be stopped” field, and they never quite managed to frame the words.
And, of course, once you got past the doorway demons of any organization, people just assumed you had a right to be there, and gave you directions.
Mr. Groat was in a room by himself; a sign on the door said DO NOT ENTER, but Moist seldom bothered about that sort of thing.
The old man was sitting up in bed, looking gloomy, but he beamed as soon as he saw Moist.
“Mr. Lipwig! You’re a sight for sore eyes, sir! Can you find out where they’ve hid my trousers? I told them I was fit as a flea, sir, but they went and hid my trousers! Help me out of here before they carry me away to another bath, sir. A bath, sir!”
“They have to carry you?” said Moist. “Can’t you walk, Tolliver?
“Yessir, but I fights ’em, fights ’em, sir. A bath, sir? From wimmin? Oggling at my trumpet-and-skittles? I call that shameless! Everyone knows soap kills the natural effulgences, sir! Oh, sir! They’re holdin’ me pris’ner, sir! They gived me a trouserectomy, sir!”
“Please calm down, Mr. Groat,” said Moist urgently. The old man had gone quite red in the face. “You’re all right, then?”
“Just a scratch, sir, look…” Groat unfastened the buttons of his nightshirt. “See?” he said triumphantly.
Moist nearly fainted. The banshee had tried to make a tic-tac-toe board out of the man’s chest. Someone else had stitched it neatly.
“Nice job of work, I’ll give them that,” Groat said grudgingly. “But I’ve got to be up and doing, sir, up and doing!”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” said Moist, staring at the mess of scabs.
“Right as rain, sir. I told ’em, sir, if a banshee can’t get at me through my chest protector, none of their damn invisible little biting